


Ribbons

by Cin (Ayai)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Guardian Angel! AU, Humanstuck!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-09
Packaged: 2017-12-10 23:08:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/791247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ayai/pseuds/Cin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat was great at his job and had a near perfect record before a 16 year old girl ruined everything. Racing against the clock, he tries to fix what she has undone before the ribbon fades, and the watch freezes, reading 0:00:00:00 all around.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ribbons

“Come on… Come on, Terezi… Shit! God fucking dammit!”

 

Karkat Vantas was so fucking done with his occupation.

 

He swiped his screen away in anger, minimizing and catching it right before it shattered on the golden stone below. He tucked the small square into his equally minuscule pocket. 

 

Karkat began to pace the width of the hallway, his face twisted in a scowl. She was so close! The longer she kept messing this up, the longer it would take Karkat to finally get his final credit, which meant a promotion was even further out of his reach.

 

“Shit!” He exclaimed once more, kicking under the open hole in the stone that acted as a window. The glowing ring above his head bounced and ended up smacking him in the face before returning to its rightful place. Karkat rubbed the circular indention in his forehead while trying to glower up at his halo.

 

“Having trouble, Karkat?”

 

The melodic tone prodded at Karkat’s eardrums, only irritating him further. The likelihood of him getting chewed out by his boss was high, and he was definitely not in the mood.

He sighed, scratching his dark locks, “Its Terezi.” It was just getting downright embarrassing at this point. He had one job and one job only. It wasn’t even a difficult job, but for some reason there was a kink in the road this time.

Aradia Megido sighed a bit, her wings twitching in irritation. One of the large feathers dislodged from its peers, leaving behind a shimmering trail as it drifted to the ground. The large, pure white wings gave her a dwarf-like appearance, though it also may have been just her in comparison to Karkat, who towered over her at six-foot, give or take a few inches. Though Karkat had an advantage in height, the small Angel radiated authority out of every pore, making it clear to anyone who passed who was in charge.

Karkat’s appearance was more submissive. His own wings are a dull gray, with little to no glow and glimmer at any time. He shook them out a bit, the tension building up in the tips releasing slightly, though they still felt like lead weights pulling Karkat’s shoulders back. The weight was a result of all this stress that a single human was putting him through. He completely retracted them, folding them neatly against his shoulder blades. They were usually light enough for Karkat to forget they were there. He was completely unable to remember a time when there were no wings upon his back. It was kind of like toes, they’re always there helping you through life, but sometimes you forget they exist. The function of a toe was much unappreciated, Karkat mused, much like himself.

As a Guardian Angel, Karkat and his coworkers were absolutely essential to keep the living moving forward.

It was Karkat’s job to make sure his Ward’s life went exactly as planned. The entire life of a human is planned from birth, the second you take in your first breath The Divine Mother writes your story in a blink of an eye. You stay on the path that Fate wrote, never straying or wavering from what she planned. Karkat existed to make sure that no outside force could harm his Ward on their journey.

Very rarely, a Ward will break the iron cable tethering them to the path and create their own thread.

This will break more cables, effectively tearing up The Divine Mother’s preplanned future, and resulting in very dangerous consequences.

Karkat’s current Ward had weakened her cable, and it was on the verge of snapping.

He could never catch an easy case.

Aradia pulled her own viewer out of thin air, her assigned dress having no pockets. Materializing object out of thin air was just one of the perks of being in a position of power, Karkat supposed. One day, he was positive he’d be even higher than her, serving directly under The Divine Mother and the Father himself. Karkat would one day be the General, commanding the army of Warrior Angels, who had all one day been in the same place as him, spending their days before promotion protecting and watching over their Wards.

Small finger pressed over her lips, Aradia furrowed her brows, watching Terezi intently as the teenager did something that Karkat couldn’t quite make out from his angle. Knowing his Ward inside and out though, Karkat knew that it was 3:00, meaning Terezi was inside her bedroom studying. She worked on a very tight schedule on week days, which made Karkat’s job pretty easy for five days out of the seven each week. Of course on weekends Terezi was about as predictable as a mentally unstable kitten.

Aradia sighed once again, minimizing her screen and letting it vaporize. She looked up at Karkat, “How late is she?” she questioned, her eyes flickering toward the pocket of Karkat’s crisp white khakis.

He slipped his long fingers in the pocket, drawing out a red pocket watch with intricate designs decorating the lid, delicately shaped to form roaring dragons. Surrounding the pocket watch were golden threads, orbiting around it lazily. They looked as if they could be easily snapped to the untrained eye, but what made this pocket watch special was that it could only be opened by Karkat. He released the chain, letting the watch fall a few inches before catching it in his outstretched palm, the golden threads vanishing upon contact.

He flicked his Ward’s watch open, observing the many hands that rotated around the center at different rates. Years have trained him on how to identify one hand from the other. Picking out the right one was second nature to him now.

This particular hand had been frozen for a while, and had been slowly tarnishing ever since then. The stopping was normal, the rusting was not.

It was like a prodding in his brain, pulsating to the beat of his heart.

_-15:04:13:45_

_Fifteen days, four hours, thirteen minutes, 45 seconds_

“A little over two weeks.” Karkat grumbled out, remembering to be as polite as he could manage.

Two weeks past the second Terezi was supposed to begin dating her soul mate.

~*~

That little fucker had Karkat on the edge of his seat while his internal timer counted down to 0:0:0:0.

She had been lounging on his couch, literally in his lap, with a GameCube controller help in her slack grip. They were playing some incredibly pixilated game, though compared to what Karkat has seen before with his previous Wards, it was pretty advanced.

His bedroom was dark and cluttered. The room was not small, but the many computers stuck to walls and desks took up a lot of the space with all of their knickknacks and doodads (Karkat was not up to date on computers; they were still relatively new to him. He had a certain fascination with human technology, very interested in the mechanics behind them. He was used to everything just appearing and working almost magically. Well, he guessed it was magic.) There was hardly any room for the single bed and two-person couch, which was probably better suited to be a loveseat with its tiny size.

His name was Sollux Captor, age 16. He and his family were from Sweden, moving to the United States of America when he was seven after his father was transferred.

Karkat could run through Sollux’s file all day, as he had everything about the boy memorized to be able to help his Ward better with problems that were sure to arise in the future when they were together. The teen was a ball of mixed emotions plus an overly large dose of sass, much like Terezi, which Karkat assumed was why they were so drawn to each other since Sollux’s first day of school in the new country. They had been best friends for nine years, and Karkat had studied their relationship closely the entire time. He had honestly never even thought that they would have this issue.

Terezi had paused the game, the light coming from the flat screen television making her icy blue eyes appear almost black. She had sighed, slamming her head into the armrest.

Her relationship with her previous boyfriend did not end so well. She and Dave had a massive fight, ending whatever they had before. Karkat was glad that she wasn’t tied to that asshole. He could hardly stand to watch over the both of them for only six months; he was just sure he would go insane if he had to do it for sixty years. Unfortunately, Dave Strider would still play a large role in Terezi’s life, so Karkat couldn’t wash his hands of the annoying prick just yet.

Sollux himself had just ended a relationship, though he was not as emotionally invested as Terezi was, he was still pretty —as he described it— “bummed out”.

Terezi toyed with the joysticks on the controller, speaking softly, which was pretty out of character for her, probably a result of their mutual pity party, “Sollux,” she had said, the corners of her mouth turned upside down.

He looked at her, probably a bit irritated that Terezi had paused while he was in the middle of winning, “What is it, I’m trying to beat the shit out of you and I can’t without the game unpaused.” He muttered back, his strong accent and noticeable lisp making his words hard to make out.

“Why don’t we just say ‘fuck it’ and date each other? We’re both too hot for anyone else.” She tried to throw a half-hearted joke into the end.

This is when the warm heat filled Karkat, and he knew the clock had hit zero, but from his viewpoint, he could tell something was wrong.

Terezi’s tone of voice was all wrong, as were her facial expression and body language. She was just too quiet and relaxed; you could tell just by looking at her that she was in the wrong state of mind to be getting together with her soul mate.

Karkat’s heart only picked up the pace when Sollux put down his controller and he too sighed.

“Tez,” he began, but she cut him off, shaking her head and putting her hands over her eyes, digging her razor nails into her forehead, as if she was trying to scratch the idea out of her mind.

“I know, I know.” She murmured, shaking her head and restarting the game. It was only silence from there on out.

Karkat could feel it as the number descended further into the negatives.

~*~

Aradia tucked in her wings, taking on a very serious tone. “If it’s been that long, something has to be done. It’s obvious that Miss Pyrope isn’t going to fix this by herself, she might need a bit of help.” She said, looking at Karkat expectantly.

Karkat shifted his weight nervously. He was aware of what she wanted him to do, but the very thought frightened him.

It was his duty to go and correct any mistakes his Ward made, meaning he would have to go down to the surface and physically manipulate Terezi back onto her cable.

Karkat hadn’t been on Earth since he was living, and even then he couldn’t remember a single thing about the place. He was well informed on how everything worked, but he had never actually stepped foot on the Earth’s crust. It was like knowing all about the moon, but when faced with being forced to go to the moon for an undisclosed amount of time, the last thing you wanted to do was leave your safe haven.

“Do I have to?” Karkat moaned. He was perfectly happy where he was.

Aradia pursed her lips, “You don’t have to do anything,” Karkat’s wings recovered from their drooping position slightly, “but I’ll have to remind you what happens to a stray human.” And the wings fell once more.

It was the first thing you learned in training, a human that has broken their cable to the point where it is no longer fixable will be terminated.

It sounded slightly barbaric, but the law was in place to keep humanity in order.

Honestly, terminating Terezi would not sit well with Karkat.

1.       It would keep him from getting his final credit until the planned passing of his next Ward.

And

2.       Although he would never admit it aloud, Karkat had grown fond of the small girl.

She was different, just like him. The other angels had saved him from the terrible afterlife he was granted, and he was going to do the same for her.

He looked Aradia in the eye, knowing that he was about to face the biggest challenge he has been yet presented with, he spoke clearly and plainly.

“Yeah, I’ll fix it.”

And with that he extended his wings, pushing them down and rocketing himself out of the corridor through one of the open skylights, on a direct course to the place he called home to gather a few items before entering through the portal.


End file.
